La La Land loopy
LIFE. It’s full of funny little surprises. For instance, you didn’t expect the Amazon parcel to arrive quite when it did, i.e. five minutes after you had to leave the house. (And eight hours after you were notified it would come.)
Surprises can be welcome, too. Like when you are getting married in Las Vegas and Rod Stewart turns up, unannounced, to serenade you. Which is exactly what happened to one lucky couple this week.
In honour of Rod’s romantic gesture, today’s diary recalls those surprises that have been good, bad and: “Whoa, what the heckety-heck just happened there?!” Such as the Scottish TV executive who settled in Los Angeles and was surprised to be informed he was fitting in well with the Californian lifestyle. This proud Scot assured the diary he hadn’t gone native, before adding: “But my publicist, my personal trainer and my herbalist disagree.”
Unaccountable behaviour
SOMETIMES a person will astound you by acting in a manner not expected of their profession. Such as an extrovert accountant. And how would you spot such an exotic creature? Well, he’s the type of brassy and overbearing bean-counter who stares at your shoes rather than his own when talking to you.
Teutonic tutorial
SCHOOLCHILDEN, unsurprisingly, are always surprising. We recall a German class in the school in Auchinleck. The teacher reminded her pupils to be sure to remember the umlauts on certain words. Such scholarly advice clearly hit home. A few minutes later a pupil raised his hand to ask about a certain word, enquiring: “Is it wan o’ thae words ah’ve got tae put a wee omelette on the top?”
Attendance (highly) unlikely
Some incidents should come as no surprise. For example, a copy of a judgement for the Pensions Appeals Tribunal once landed on our desk. It gave the name of the claimant, including the detail ‘deceased’ in brackets. It then declared the case had been adjourned. Why? We quote the (less than surprising) reason in full: “Claimant failed to attend”.
Time to reflect
THEN there was the Glasgow businessman who, arriving back at the airport from a trip abroad, reluctantly decided to buy his wife a belated birthday present. Looking at perfumes, he discounted the £60 bottle, then the £25 eau de cologne, before telling the young assistant: “Can you not show me something really cheap?” Without a word, she handed him a mirror from the counter.
Tube rube
A surprise of the unwelcome kind. A Glasgow woman entered her bedroom and spied one of those cardboard tubes of Pringles crisps. Giving it a shake, she realised only a few crumbs were left. But being peckish, she took off the lid and poured them into her mouth. It was at that precise moment she discovered exactly what her husband did with the toe-nail clippings after going at them with the scissors in the bedroom.
Nasty surprise
A READER once told us the following joke. We hope (and pray) he really was kidding. “I was digging in my garden,” he informed us, “When I found a chest full of gold coins. I was about to run straight inside to tell my wife about it. But then I remembered why I was digging in our garden.”
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